IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Big Oil, utilities are lining up for an electric vehicle war; China carbon emissions in retreat after 'structural break' in economy; China carbon emissions in retreat after 'structural break' in economy; Solar is saving low-income households money in Colorado, and could be a national model; Alaska Gov. Walker urges suspension of Pebble Mine project; U.S. Navy is taking climate change seriously; Seattle becomes first major U.S. city to ban straws; Mexico’s new president promises more nationalistic energy approach; China has refused to recycle the West's plastics. What now? ... PLUS: Decarbonizing the not so low hanging fruit... and much, MUCH more! ...

The interviews conducted by staffers for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee late last week shed new light on the EPA administrator’s willingness to leverage his position for his personal benefit and to ignore warnings even from allies about potential ethical issues...

"We would have meetings what we were going to take off on the official schedule. We had at one point three different schedules. One of them was one that no one else saw except three or four of us," Chmielewski told CNN. "It was a secret ... and they would decide what to nix from the public calendar."

[T]he previous high-minimum temperature record for any 24-hour period was 41.9°C (107.4°F), set at nearby Khassab Airport in Oman on June 27, 2011....With sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Oman at 32°C (90°F), about 1°C (1.8°F) above average for this time of year, these waters were warm enough to allow the city to set the new all-time high minimum temperature record.

Over a period of 24 hours, the temperature in the coastal city of Quriyat, Oman, never dropped below 108.7 degrees (42.6 Celsius) Tuesday, most likely the highest minimum temperature ever observed on Earth...For example, in nearly 150 years of weather records, Washington, D.C.’s high temperature has never exceeded 106 degrees.

[R]esidents of the predominantly Arab city near the border with Iraq complain of salty, muddy water coming out of their taps amid a yearslong drought...“Although Iran has a history of drought, over the last decade, Iran has experienced its most prolonged, extensive and severe drought in over 30 years,” said a recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization, a United Nations agency. Some 230 people were poisoned in Khuzestan province after a 20-hour water outage in Ramhormoz county led to drinking water not being chlorinated, the semi-official Fars news agency reported Sunday. The protests did not appear to be linked to the poisoning.

The "certificate of need" granted Thursday by the state's Public Utility Commission greenlights a replacement for Enbridge's Line 3, a 1,000-mile pipeline that runs from Hardistry, Alberta, to Superior, Wisconsin. The new Line 3 will have an initial capacity about twice that of the current pipeline, and that volume could be increased and also allow for other increases elsewhere in Enbridge's cross-border pipeline network.

All five members of the Public Utilities Commission backed the project, though some cited heavy trepidation, and a narrow majority later approved the company’s preferred route despite opposition from American Indian tribes and climate change activists...Several commissioners said the issue was difficult. Chairwoman Nancy Lange choked up and took off her glasses to wipe her eyes as she described her reasoning for approving the project. Another commissioner, Katie Sieben, said it was “so tough because there is no good outcome.”

The offer announced by the U.S. Forest Service allows Nestle Waters North America, the biggest bottled-water company in the nation, to keep piping water from the Strawberry Creek watershed that it’s tapped for decades...The company, a division of the Swiss food giant, took about 32 million gallons of water from wells and water collection tunnels in the forest in 2016. It contends that it inherited rights to forest water dating back more than a century.

The Forest Service took up the matter in 2015 after a Desert Sun investigation revealed Nestlé was piping water out of the mountains under a permit that listed 1988 as the expiration date. The revelation that officials had allowed the company to use the permit without a review for 27 years generated an outpouring of opposition and prompted the permit review, as well as a lawsuit by environmental groups and an investigation by California regulators.

Ultimately though, Anderson said her organization wants Nestlé out, and she hopes the settlement could be a first step in a process that leads to shutting down the company’s operation. “What we hope for is that they’ll deny it,” she said.

Rhode Island becomes first U.S. state to sue fossil fuel industry over climate damage:

"Big oil knew for decades that greenhouse gas pollution from their operations and their products were having a significant and detrimental impact on the earth's climate," [state Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin] said. "Instead of working to reduce that harm, these companies chose to conceal the dangers, undermine public support for greenhouse gas regulation and engage in massive campaigns to promote the ever increasing use of their products and ever increasing revenues in their pockets."...The lawsuit [pdf]...names 14 oil and gas companies and some of their affiliates, saying they created conditions that constitute a public nuisance under state law and failed to warn the public and regulators of a risk they were well aware of.

To stabilize global temperature, net carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to zero. The window of time is rapidly closing to reduce emissions and limit warming to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the goal set in the Paris climate accord. The further we push the climate system beyond historical conditions, the greater the risks of potentially unforeseen and even catastrophic changes to the climate - so every reduction in emissions helps.

Clean-energy enthusiasts frequently claim that we can go bigger, that it's possible for the whole world to run on renewables - we merely lack the "political will." So, is it true? Do we know how get to an all-renewables system? Not yet. Not really.